Frank Denton: Does lead pollution cause crime?

Crime overall continues to decline, nationally and locally, and a lot of people insist they know why.

The sheriff says it’s good policing, and if we don’t want the trend to reverse, we’d better boost the law-enforcement budget.

It’s economics, says the businessperson. When people can get a job, they don’t have to steal.

Demographics, says the sociologist. The baby boomers are getting too old to get into fights or stick up gas stations.

Prisons, say advocates of locking up all miscreants.

Legalized abortion, because it prevented many unwanted babies, proposed a 1999 book.

“But there’s a problem common to all these theories,” writes Kevin Drum in the February issue of Mother Jones magazine. “It’s hard to tease out actual proof,” as all of those explanations are refuted, in one way or another, by statistical analyses over time and place.

But there is one factor that is remarkably consistent with crime, especially violent crime.

Lead.

In his fascinating article, Drum outlines 20 years of research in several disciplines amounting to “an astonishing body of evidence. We now have studies at the international level, the national level, the state level, the city level and even the individual level.

“Groups of children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes.”

Why lead? Drum points to neurological research showing that moderately high lead exposure changes and degrades the brain, possibly leading to aggressive behavior, impulsivity, ADHD and lower IQ. “And right there, you’ve practically defined the profile of a violent young offender.”

We get lead in our bodies in many ways, but the greatest amounts came from lead added to gasoline to prevent engine knocking. It’s been banned since 1996, but the 50 years of lead that smoked out of our tailpipes settled in the environment, especially in big cities that had the most cars.

Jacksonville’s Environmental Quality Division once monitored lead in the air, but stopped in 2002 because the levels found were well below the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, perhaps because that lead had settled into the soil, to be kicked up by playing children and construction.

Another major source is lead-based paint that was common in the early part of the 20th century. It was banned in 1978, but continues to flake off walls of older houses and pollute the environment, particularly in poor neighborhoods, sometimes even being eaten by toddlers.

The Duval County Health Department started a lead testing and prevention program in 1995 with a $400,000 federal grant. It not only sought out and tested children with lead poisoning but also took on the owners and others connected with the lead-painted buildings.

The program was very successful, says Jeff Goldhagen, who was then director of the health department and now is chief of the Division of Community Pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville. “We thought we had eliminated the issue.”

So lead-paint programs became less of a priority, federal support went away about 10 years ago, and the national and Duval County emphasis faded.

But Goldhagen agrees with Drum that the science has progressed quickly since then and found that ever-lower levels of blood lead can affect children’s brains and have serious implications for criminal justice, intellectual development and educational success.

“Neurological research is demonstrating that lead’s effects are even more appalling, more permanent, and appear at far lower levels than we ever thought,” Drum writes. “The EPA now says flatly that there is ‘no demonstrated safe concentration of lead in blood.’ ”

Drum roughly estimates that true lead abatement nationally could require about $20 billion annually for 20 years. But, he writes, “Cleaning up the rest of the lead that remains in our environment could turn out to be the cheapest, most effective crime prevention tool we have.”

After 40 years of covering social issues as a journalist, and not being a hammer in search of a nail, I tend to roll my eyes at simplistic solutions.

I have come to see crime, like other social pathologies, as systemic, with several major causes of varying magnitudes, sort of a calculus of causation.

Demographics, parenting, education, economics and criminal justice all play a part, I remain convinced, but based on the evidence, I am also ready to accept that the environment sets the starting line.

Frank, you are too be congratulated for being willing to look at and consider some other causes for crime (and perhaps increasingly bizarre and violent behavior among some youth) in addition to the more commonly cited economic, demographic, and socio-cultural causes. Too often, neurological disorders get thrown together with mental illnesses, with neither getting sufficient attention.

The adverse health effects of lead in its various forms have been identified and well-documented since the 1950's. Some use of it may be unavoidable in a modern industrial society, but it should be minimized and contained, and residual lead as you describe should be mitigated as have other hazardous and toxic chemicals in the soil.

Another important point which you make is that crime is systemic, with perhaps multiple causes. In the current debate over gun regulation, it is too easy to focus on guns alone or even primarily. The causes which you point out, including mental illness, neurological disorder, and the influence of violent, toxic media cannot be discounted.

These are yet more issues indicating the essential role of legitimate, credible print media in modern society. Electronic news media does not often give sufficient attention and debate to such issues, and the internet is full of opinion masquerading as fact.